Editorial
I launched the new Mekonta site a few months ago - and while I'm generally happy with it, there are still a few little fixes and tweaks I need to make here and there. And rather than get on and spend a couple of hours making these changes - I keep find far more entertaining ways of occupying my time; like starting work on a mock-rebrand of the site.
It's something I had been thinking about for a little while and then I started watching Deadwood which is a beautifully photographed western, and that really spurred me on to make some western style designs.
The project began purely out of curiosity - I had a lot of ideas floating around that I wanted to build on. I'm not too sure actually rebranding Mekonta with a full-western theme is quite the right thing, it's too stylised for what is essentially a portfolio site and ends up detracting from the other work being featured. But I would love someone else to see the work and decide that it's a look that would be right for their web site.
View the designs
Mekonta is the portfolio site for freelance designer John Cowen, based in Exeter in South West England. I design for print and web sites - attractive, functional and accessible web sites are particular favourites.
A strong web presence is increasingly essential to any business. Wheteher you need a completely new site, an existing site re-designed or a way to easily update the web site yourself, I can build you a site that is easy to use, quick to load and will leave a positive and accurate reflection of your business.
With a background in fine art, graphic design and working as a Content Manager for large eCommerce companies, I have the knowledge and experience to deliver a web site that is both attractive and accessible.
I do emails too!
eMail marketing is becoming a big business. It's an important means of communicating with customers and, perhaps even more importantly, potential customers.
Plain text messages are OK if you know the recipients are going to read your emails. But if you need to make more of an impact to get their attention, you'll want to look into the possibilities available to you with HTML emails.
HTML emails can be much richer with images and more advanced text layouts than those available to you thorough plain text email. It can even be a direct copy of your website that recipients can click through to straight from their inbox.
Featured Site
Paynes Farm
My latest project to go out into the wild and fend for itself: Paynes Farm holiday cottage website.
The web site already existed before I was approached, but had been built using a template from their web hosts. The owners didn't have much web design experience and had found that even with these automated templates, they hadn't been able to make the site look quite as attractive as it could.
It's a simple layout and design, and while most pages still follow the same layout, there is more flexibility built into the site that will accomodate other requirements should they ever be needed in the future.
One of the owners of Paynes Farm also works as an Interior Designer (see: Anna Hamlyn Interiors. So not only do the holiday cottages have fantastic decor they had also been recently photographed by a professional photographer. The photographs really make the site.
View the site.
